Eamon Carr and Richie Buckley on YouTube

Remembering the STARDUST - "Molly Malone"

Johnny Fean & Steve Travers Headline Ballyshannon Folk Festival

From the Fean and Travers Newsletter

Great news just is is that Johnny & Steve have been asked to Headline this years Ballyshannon Folk Festival, more news on that as the year progresses. They have also been rehearsing with ACE Drummer & Percussionist "Blendi Krasniqi" who is going to perform with them on all of their gigs this year, including the Galway and Ennis gigs above. Full bio on Blendi to follow.

Also: Fean and Travers at Mall Theatre in Tuam, Co Galway - March 2nd

Johnny Fean and Steve Travers in Tuam

Irish rock legends to play The Mall Theatre
From the Galway Independent

Johnny Fean and Steven Travers, legendary players on the Irish rock scene, will play The Mall Theatre in Tuam on Friday 2 March.

Johnny Fean is best known for being one of the world's top guitarists when he played with Horslips, who at the height of their fame inspired such luminaries as Rory Gallagher to take up the guitar.

Along with Steven Travers, a former member of the Miami Showband and one of Ireland's best bass players, the pair have come together to create a musical experience that mixes furious paced rock, grass roots blues and some Celtic rock classics.

More at the link.

Amazon Review of The Book of Invasions

Horslips: Their Best Album

Unlike the other Horslips albums I have reviewed on Amazon, this album gains force from its accrued impact, rather than its individual tracks. Like "Táin," "Book" is meant to work as a unified single piece of music, as the subtitle defines it. Songs are chapters in a book, verses of a poem.

Instrumental and sung passages alternate in the three movements of the album from Geantrai--cheerier songs-- to Goltrai-- laments--to Suantrai-- songs of sleep or dreams. These unify as in storytelling various "branches" of the tale and classify them in ancient Irish categories of narrative craft and intent. It's a "Celtic symphony," therefore, in the ebbs and crests of the musical representation and the lyrical explanation of the energetic clashes and couplings the Book of Invasions (Leabhar Gabhala) relates-- the tribes who landed in pre-Christian Ireland successively to fight over its land and its wealth.

More at the link.

Horslips Sighting on MySpace Blog

i really should be asleep

and shortly i am going to go and put the light out and dream odd dreams. listening to horslips and their "short stories and tall tales" cd - fantastic stuff.
my head is buzzing with thoughts and schemes, plans and ideas. none of them worth the energy involved in the firing synapses.

Just an ordinary guy with a random mentioning of an obscure album. What's weird is that I've been listening to this 'step-child' album too for the last few days or so and I'm enjoying it for its own sake immensely. Another comment under Horslips over at Irishrockers.com goes a little like this:

Luca Banche niclot-Nurin-ITALY wrote on 9/26/2006:
HORSLIPS' Late 70ies stuff was, for me, absolutely brilliant: anticipating in some way, the Irish Hard-Punk Rock Feeling of SLF, UNDERTONES etc.

It's not the usual way of looking at their music, but listening to SSTT demonstrates that there might be something to the argument. The album would also fit well in the current/retro spins of my local modern rock radio station.

"Horslips Live" in new book

The Show I'll Never Forget

Sean Manning edited The Show, which Da Capo will publish as a paperback original on January 15. The book's full list of musical subjects-- in order of appearance in the book (which is in chronological order by date of occurrence)-- is long enough that it might convince you to give up reading as well, but it is printed below:

R.E.M., Miles Davis, Jimmy Reed, Steve Abbot, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, Titans of the Tenor!, the late James Brown, Jimmy Hendrix and Buddy Guy, Woodstock, Nina Simone, Bill Evans, Led Zeppelin, Three Dog Night, Television, the Sunshine Festival, Queen, Mink DeVille, Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, X/Levi & the Rockats, the Funk Festival, Black Flag, the Horslips, Public Image Ltd., the Kinks, Rush, the Pogues, the Beastie Boys, Redd Kross, Bon Jovi, Van Morrison (written about twice by married couple Robert Burke Warren and Holly George-Warren), Clarence Carter, Nirvana, the Lounge Lizards, Katell Keineg, Einstürzende Neubauten, Beck, Joe Maneri, the Mekons, Prince, Glen Branca/Rudolph Grey/Wharton Tiers, Antony and the Johnsons featuring Lou Reed, David Bowie, Kevin Spacey, the White Stripes, and Metric (written as a team piece by Daniel Handler and Andrew Sean Greer).

The Show I'll Never Forget, publisher's site

The Way We Were - Come Back Horslips in 2005

Yesterday was the two-year anniversary of my unofficial fansite as a live site. I had forgotten it myself until scrolling down to the bottom of my homepage the other day to check visitor stats. But yes: New Years Day 2007 marks two years of Comebackhorslips.com. (Or geocities.com/comebackhorslips as it was then) And sure enough, the original version of my nighttime and weekend obsession is still up and running.

Submitted for your scornful amusement and derision:

geocities.com/comebackhorslips/home

(Links now direct to the owned domain, so we don't exceed our bandwidth within ten minutes as used to happen back in those days!)